


Parting is such sweet sorrow

by TheMalhamBird



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Angst, F/M, Kaladin is not the best at relationships, second person narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 15:22:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5095577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMalhamBird/pseuds/TheMalhamBird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An incident on the battlefield leaves Kaladin in hospital one time too many for Tarah to cope with. A sergeant arrives with some news for Kaladin about his position in the army</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parting is such sweet sorrow

You’re not quite sure how you ended up in the hospital this time- something about a siege tower...and arrows...and...climbing it? Hacking something so it fell and...oh, very clever, you groan internally. Dismantle a stack of wood you’re standing on top of, why don’t you? It had seemed a good idea at the time, you recall, but why...

Blood on your hands. Scrabbling around in Tien’s intest- no. Not Tien, you correct yourself. Tukks. It had been Tukks with the arrows in his stomach. Why had you got the two of them confused, Tukks is a greybeard and Tien- the only thing they have in common is that they’re-

It’s coming back to you more clearly now, hours spent trapped under archer fire, picking off friends and comrades one by one beneath a sweltering sun. Tukks had been the final straw; the veteran had deserved to die in bed at home, surrounded by the daughters and grandchildren he writes to every week, not spend hours bleeding out on rocks whilst you failed to save yet another person...

“It’s alright, lad,” the squadleader had mumbled, bloody hand grabbing the back of your neck. For your comfort or his, you couldn’t say. “You’re alright, concentrating on saving the others...Sergeant! That’s an order! Concentrating on saving the others...”

“A siege tower, Kaladin? Honestly?”

Her voice shocks you back in to the present; you turn you head to face her and smile. “Tarah...” The smile fades when you see her dark eyes are rimmed with red and her dark alethi hair is loose and not carefully braided, as it normally is. “Tarah?” you ask. “What happened? What’s wrong?” You wonder if  her father was killed in the battle, if he too was struck by an arrow fired from on high by an enemy archer-

“A siege tower?” She repeats, voice higher than usual. She’s upset. She’s upset with _you-_

“Tarah-“ you struggle to sit up and collapse back down on the pillow again as a wave of dizziness overcomes you. “I had to get the others out,” you explain. “It was the best-“

“And you had to do it?” Tarah asks. “You, personally? You couldn’t have sent one of the others, some mercenary that no one cares about?”

“There’s no one in my squad who no one cares about,” you say, confused. You don’t understand what you’ve done wrong, exactly- after all, this sort of thing has happened before and she’s never been so cross-

“Harl? Lekks?” Tarah asks. “Herdazian mercenaries, no one cares, no one in the camp cares if they-“

“I care,” you say. “I would care if they died. If I could have done something to prevent it-“

She’s staring at you like you’re some sort of ghost, and it scares you. You roll on to your side, facing her properly, and you try to change the subject. “I’m alive,” you say. “I’m fine aren’t I? I’m always fine...” you reach out for her hand. She snatches it away and you let it fall to side of the bed, limp.

“You’re not fine,” she whispers. “I thought you were fine, but you’re not, you haven’t been...”

“Tarah...”

“No, listen to me! I talked to the Taker twins when I found out you were in hospital, _again,_ \- I thought you’d died this time, I spend every battle thinking that you’ve been killed- it’s- the risks you take-not just this time Kal but all the time and you’re going to and I can’t- I’m sorry, Kal. But I can’t watch you get yourself killed, so I’m sorry, but I have to...”

You don’t understand what she’s saying and you say so. She’s speaking so fast and your head hurts so much, it’s hard to concentrate.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” she repeats. “You put yourself in harm’s way without a second thought if you doing so gets someone else out of it, you do it all the time and it’s going to kill you. And I’m not going to watch, I can’t do that to myself.”

“I don’t mean to.” You say, staring at her. “I don’t- it’s just-automatic-“

“That’s what scares me,”  she says, “you can’t help yourself. It’s like you want to be killed.”

No. No that’s not it, that’s not it at all, it has nothing to do with that, it’s just you don’t want anyone else to be killed either, you can’t go through another situation like the one with Tien-

Tarah leans softly. “It’s your brother, isn’t it?” she whispers, and finally takes your hand. Her fingers are soft, warm. “It’s your brother still, I thought I had made that better. I thought I made the hurt go away.”

“You did,” you whisper. “You saved my life, Tarah, please, I- “ you want to say you need her, that you love her and the thought of her is what makes it worth helping everyone to survive, because why should anyone be forced to leave a world that has someone as wonderful as she is in it? But then you wonder if that’s selfish, if it will make her feel forced to stay and you don’t want her there because she feels she has to be, you want her there because she wants to be and so you change direction mid-sentence. “Please,” you say again. “I’ll try and break the habit-“

“I don’t think you’ll be able to.” Tarah says softly. “You’ve been punishing yourself for the last two years, and it’s not going to stop, Kal, unless...”

“Unless what?” you ask.

“Promise me you’ll leave.” Tarah says. “In two years time, when you’re enlistment ends. Promise me you won’t sign up for a second time. We can leave- go back to your parents, get married...have a family...” she strokes the side of your cheek and kisses your forehead before sitting back. “Promise me that’s what you’ll spend the next two years fighting for, and I’ll stay, I’ll be convinced we have a future.”

“I-“ you stare at her, trying to picture the life she’s describing...back in Hearthstone, with a son, a daughter, maybe...or just the two of you, together...you imagine the surgery, only this time it’s you and her working together and not father and mother, and... “I...” you try and find the words to describe exactly how much you want the scene you’ve just described, safe, happy and you can’t, so you just smile instead and she smiles back and you think she knows exactly what you mean...but you don’t realise you’re crying silently and her smile is sad until she says

“I’m sorry,” and she stands. As she does so, she takes off the copper bracelet around her wrist, the one you gave her, and goes to put it on your bedside table-

“Keep it!” you say, voice full of alarm. You mean to say keep _me,_ you mean to say I love you, don’t go...

She hesitates, then slides it back on. “I wish you well,” she says. “Really I do.”

You find your voice as she leaves, but she doesn’t look back and the things you wanted to say die on your tongue. You watch her go, the slump of her shoulders, the dullness of her walk and you realise she’s tired, probably has been tired for a long time. You wonder how you didn’t realise, and come to the conclusion that this is probably why she’s going; you have given her nothing that she can rely on with any certainty. You thought you had, those evenings, those nights you spent together and told her you loved her, but...

You wake some time later and see a tall, mountainous man sitting in the chair by your bed, and you frown at him. “Who...” you ask.

The man coughs. “Dallet,” he says. “I’m your new sergeant.”

New Sergeant. Of course. Tukks is dead; he’ll have been replaced. A newcomer wouldn’t necessarily want a sergeant who had only just turned eighteen-

“What are your orders, sir? For training new recruits and the like?”

 _What?_ You think.

“What?” you say blankly, at a complete loss as to what this “Dallet” means. The man looks awkward.

“No one’s told you? Only the men said you had a lady, I thought perhaps she would have ...”

“She’s gone,” you say, feeling hollow.

“Well,” Dallet says. “The girls in camp will all be queuing to replace her.” He places something on the table; epaulettes with white knots attached, meant to be connected to the shoulders of a uniform jacket to denote a – “Squadleader,” the man explains. “The lighteyes were mighty impressed with the way you brought down that tower, lad. Sir.” The man corrects himself with another cough as you stare at the white cord, before he continues  “The surgeons say you should get out of here in a day or so, once they’re sure you don’t have concussion. Which you probably don’t. I mean, you survived a drop of...however high those things were, it’s no wonder people are saying the Stormfather’s blessed you.”

You continue to stare, blankly, before switching your attention to Dallet’s face as he asks again, chuckling slightly as if amused by your bemusement:

“Do you have any orders, Squadleader Stormblessed?”


End file.
